The two-day meeting focused on understanding and mapping the landscape of labour resistance in Asia in the past decade or so, with a special focus on identifying, in each country, (1) emerging forms of labour resistance, (2) emerging actors and players in new labour movements, and (3) trends in emerging alliance building and collaborative initiatives.
Batam is an island close to Singapore but part of Indonesia. Until the late 1970s it had a few thousand inhabitants that lived mostly on the produce of land, forests and sea. Like Shenzhen, it all changed in late 1970s and early 1980s. Batam became an assembly line where cheap labour could assemble parts and products that would feed into the more advanced and capital intensive Singapore industry. Being an island it was an ideal location for a free trade zone and it was developed primarily for the electronics sector.
This report was carried out by the Local Initiative for OSH Network (LION) in collaboration with AMRC. An initial mapping was done of the limestone mining area close to Bandung district in Indonesia and looking at the potential of silicosis in the region on workers and the community due to exposure to the dust in the environment due to extensive mining in the area.
This report on the OSH and reproductive health issues of garment workers was carried out by the Local Initiative for OSH Network (LION) in partnership with AMRC. OSH as right of the worker mostly fulfilled by employers only to “outwit” the buyer and to keep the orders coming in. This situation has been understood by all parties involved in, the big companies in Indonesia“survive” by any order and so the worker is never the priority. The situation gets even worse when there is no union in the company.
Recognising that economies in Asia are developing very fast, there is a considerably widening gap in terms of income as indicated by the Gini coefficients per country. For example, in most of the countries including Laos and Vietnam the income gap has been widening while the economy grows. Aside from increasing informalisation of jobs, there are also other indicators indicating that the labor situation has not improved in the last decade. It is true that poverty in Asia is decreasing but relative poverty has been increasing which means that the income gap in society has become more serious. There are more self-employed and own account workers and more women than men in these categories. The situation of women is relatively worse than men in the informal economy because they have no voice and visibility particularly in decision making processes. Aside from increasing precarious work, the marginalised informal workers also suffer from privatisation of public goods. Increasing occupational risks comprise another difficulty faced by informal workers.
The Asian Roundtable on Social Protection (AROSP) meeting for Southeast Asian partners happened in Phnom Penh, Cambodia on 27-28 June 2014. It intends to consolidate the AROSP partners’ network in Southeast Asia towards the strengthening of the social protection advocacy in the region. It was attended by 30 participants (14 women and 16 men) representing workers’ organisations in different Southeast Asian countries including Cambodia, Indonesia, Laos, Malaysia, Myanmar, the Philippines, Thailand, and Vietnam.
This map tells the story of Samsung Electronics' Supply Chains and their working condition across Asia. It shows cases of occupational ill and victims in several Asian countries and key issues including labour union busting by Samsung companies and its suppliers and violence towards workers, among others.
This film documented workers' struggles in Bekasi Industrial Zones, West Java, Indonesia, between 2011 and 2013. It describes the forms of workers' resistance including marches, toll road blockade, shutting down the industrial zones, and factory raid. The documentary presents the views and voices from the ground, explains why workers and union leaders resisted against the capital.
Language: Indonesian with English subtitle (to activate the subtitle, please turn on the "captions" button)
The content of this book is upon of the discussion in the Fourth Asian Roundtable on Social Security meeting which was co-organised by AMRC and the University of Philippines in Manila. The book includes country reports on social protection in Asia, overview on the road to social protection in Asia, outcome of the conference, among others. The book serves to provide comprehensive information on social protection for all from the labour perspective in Asia.
This book describes the struggles of workers fighting for their basic rights in the electronics industry with a focus on the operations of Samsung Electronics and its Asian suppliers, including those in South Korea, Indonesia, India, Vietnam, Malaysia, Thailand and Taiwan. It also discusses the overall situation of the electrical appliance and electronics industries in Japan where workers have been hit hard by factories relocations.